National Art Museum showcases works ranging from drawing to calligraphy

The National Art Museum of China offers a diverse program for the upcoming New Year holiday, with works shown at eight ongoing exhibitions varying from drawings, sketches, oil paintings, Chinese paintings and calligraphy to lacquer paintings.

The shows present the scope and depth of Chinese artistic traditions and the creation of "red classic" art, which reflects the course of the Communist Party of China through the decades.

Featured artists include Tang Yihe, one of the first-generation modern oil painters of China, and Xu Minghua, now aged 90 and who once studied in Russia.

The museum has collaborated with the Nanjing Museum in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, on several exhibitions of selected collections of both museums. This time they have mounted an exhibition to show classical Chinese figure paintings from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

Another exhibition shows lacquer paintings. The country boasts a long history of using raw lacquer and processing it to create decorative objects. Artists today render to the material a modern touch by using it to depict historic events and real life.